hello darkness my old friend w/ devrel expert, tessa kriesel

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what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Oh man, who am I and what do I do? Okay, so that's a crease still here. I get my hands in a lot of stuff like egg and farming and a bunch of other really awesome stuff like that. But in my day to day, I am a developer expert and CEO at Build4Dev. I have tried so many titles over the last year, go to market strategist, developer, program builder, like all the things. But at the end of the day, like it is DevRel at its essence. and I build relationships with developers, and I make sure that those programs that developer products put out there actually attract developers, not these book a demo links, come on.

So I do that on my day to day. I've been doing that for almost a year, and that is actually sort of the introduction into where we started our conversation is like, because of it coming out of the last year of my business. I think I got laid off next week, last year ago, from coming up on a year. It also went, sorry. Yeah, yeah, it's been a crazy year. So I'm gonna leave it at that because we're gonna pull out a bunch of other Yeah, so yeah, so you're probably wondering and again for those of you watching Briana Holmes She just went live. I just got the email for for Torx.

So so I don't know how it works And we have two streams going live now on Torx like YouTube so That's a cool but all I've been said You know the title is Heli darkness my old friend which obviously is a little bit of a song we like that song 12 baby. Yeah, all that being said, let's talk about why that's titled, right? I got on the call and I said, Tessa, how are you doing? And so yeah, tell me, how are you doing? What's up? Yeah, how am I doing? I said, I'm finally doing good after feeling like getting out of the darkness. And you know, hence the title that, you know, that we landed with here.

But honestly, like I started building my business after I got laid off. And like, I'm going to tell y'all like, I have been in a lot of conversations about neurodiversity. And so I want to be like, yeah, when I was just talking about this, but y'all weren't there. So I'm going to just TLDR this. Lots of good conversations on sort of like neurodiversity and needing to be around friends and sort of feeling like this isolation. And then also like getting boarded jobs and having to sort of be like, Hey, I'm done with that challenge is over. I'm moving to the next thing. When I got laid off, like I was actually really sad because the challenge wasn't over, but I I am definitely a, like, hey, I see a challenge.

I want to accomplish it when I've accomplished that. And I've met those objectives. Like, I'm usually ready to be like, ready for someone else to take over. Here you go. Here's my child. It's already fruitful and providing for things and, you know, living. And so I was just sad. Like, I was sad because like, the challenge wasn't over, you know? And then started a business and did that in complete darkness. Thinking that like, oh, I'm just going to grind. I'm going to grind. Like, I'm going to just work really hard. I'm going to do all these things. and just sort of like expect things to come, I guess, in a sense.

I knew that I didn't, but I think it was just a lot easier to isolate than it was to like be out in the open. So I was telling Taylor and then this is kind of where he's like, okay, pause. Yeah. Commit your, commit your code was like, I, I went to commit your code, uh, shout out to Danny Thompson. Awesome event on Dallas. So amazing. Please go this year. It's so good. I can't wait. Um, but when I went there, I didn't realize how fricking sad I was until like I self reflected in was like, holy crap, I needed to spend time with developers.

Then that led into I need to start a stream, shout out to you, honestly, for the idea of like this kind of daily rhythm, right? It's like it just builds so quickly that way. So I started 99 dev problems on December 16th. And now all of a sudden I'm like, wait, is it bright outside again? Even though it's gloomy? Is my office shiny? Do I feel positive again? Like, am I back? Do I like that? That's so bad. Like in my back? Yeah, and it's weird because like I was there, but it was I wasn't there So I'm gonna digress on that a lot of what I felt like it's just like real real real just sad the sad year Yeah, hard.

I Know we started to go down multiple different things around this But I know you know I kind of said I joke that when I was at Vaco I don't know how I got anything done because I was driving an hour and a half in the office in the morning The way recruiting was back in the day was like you would do a lunch a coffee an in-person meeting I'd be away from my computer drive home an hour and a half hour 45 with national traffic I'm home to family and it's like I Joke they're like kind of getting done, but even lately I'm trying to find my I'm trying to pull myself out of so much much day to day.

And I think, you know, this stream is going to be a little productivity hacking here and kind of more high level theory type stuff. So hopefully I'll enjoy it. But I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, like, I agree. So I had Tages on 99 Dev Problems on Friday. Tages Kumar, super awesome guy. Definitely. Yeah, he's so awesome. But he gave me a really, well, first off that episode, it's full of hacks. So if anyone's interested in that, check it out. But the thing that he shared with me that was so enlightening is that he does these intense, he will first off, he sorts his work between objective and defensive or sorry, offensive and defensive, offensive being, oh, this is the stuff I love to do, this is my passion, this is my, this is where I like get into it right coding for him.

For me, it's probably combo, right? But then like, sort of defensively is like writing back to emails, taking care of visas, you know, stupid things we don't want to do like expense reports, right? Those are all defensive tasks. I know, right? DevRel and expense reports, whole nightmare. There's got to be a whole business to that. There's got to be a business around it. There's got to be. We should build an AI agent. Let's come back to that though. AI agent for DevRel expenses. Okay. So coming back around. Anyways, he shared that. And so then he takes those offensive tasks and he takes like 90 minutes where he just is in it and nothing else is allowed to distract him.

And I thought that was really, really amazing. Because when you start to think about sort of like getting in the weeds, like, I was too busy working, but I shouldn't have been working so hard on the things I was working on, you know? And so it's like this divide of defensive versus offensive. It feels like a better way to look at work so that you can get in it and then, you know, just muster up the, like, gumption to go work on the things that just suck, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think one of the things I've been trying to do, and I love productivity hacks, I love products.

So I'm glad we're kind of heading down this route. We're going to be everywhere. I know. It's like, because it's first time I'm working with offshore team, I do a lot of meetings in the morning. I used to do meetings in the afternoon, which is a huge shift for me. Yep. But now what I'm trying to do, especially trying to lead people in one on ones, and then also my own tasks, it's like being incredibly diligent to time block my counter and trying to get fitness. And I think what we're knowing too, we talk about too, is like making time for yourself through all this as well.

All right, I joined back doing CrossFit. So one of the things I'm doing is I'm the 530 AM Wake Up crew. I'm usually at my desk by 630, kind of starting to cross the word. But I also, my last meeting of the day is at like three. Right, right. Yeah, it's 330. And then I'm getting- I love that. Yes. What are you doing? How are you time blocking, especially trying to get out and trying to see the sunlight a little bit more? Yeah, it's funny that you bring this up because actually the last four weeks at our church, they've been talking about like getting rid of the phone and how bad the phone is and how it's basically just filled with sin because we constantly go back to social media and we're comparing ourselves or getting distracted and not spending time with our kids, et cetera.

So I just over a week ago deleted a bunch of stuff off of my phone. And so when it relates to this, I have realized that now sort of it's given me this like productivity boost or sort of balance in my life, right? And so as I look at my day, I've got like a little sliver in the morning where I'm like hanging with family, but then I'm time-blocking. So kind of back to like what Tages had shared. This week actually, I'm going to start blocking out those like offensive or those like, those tasks I wanna do, right? However the position versus the other. Sorry, my brain kind of like started thinking directly down that path and I don't remember exactly what it was.

I do something, I do something. So what are you doing? So for me, I tried to do it daily. I know some people are like, I do all my meetings on Mondays. Oh yeah, yeah. So like what are you doing? especially running your own business too, has gotta be a challenge. It's such a challenge. Like I have no meeting Wednesdays, but there's like a, but there's a client that has a recurring meeting with a different agency that I joined already. So it's like, it goes down the drain as soon as like, I bring a client in, but honestly, like I work with my clients a lot directly.

I'm not in their business, cause I don't want to get pulled into all the things, which is what fractional work is, but I'm in their business enough where like, I am getting brought into some of those interactions. And so I do have to work around my clients, which is a whole nightmare of a situation because when I've got multiple clients going on, it's like, okay, they've got this, they have this. And so I'm balancing that, but I have time blocks that are like now with these 90 minute chunks, right? That it's like, I'm gonna go get this work done. But the thing that I was just working on was like getting out of my desk, right?

And so that was where I was going with the phone apps. Thank you for reminding me. Coming back around was like, exactly. It was like in the morning, right? Like it also was clear to me that like, I wasn't spending time in the work and I wasn't spending time praying into the things I know and want to be doing. And so I reorganized essentially my day. And so it just started with like taking the things I want to do and bringing them into my calendar. And that's slowly been a progression over the last couple of weeks. Working out absolutely a freaking hard nightmare. But I figured out that there's this kind of sweet spot where like friends of mine are working out, my son wants to go work out and it's right before school.

So he can shower. And so that's actually starting to get reintroduced because you and I did talk about that I commit your code. It's like it's so hard to balance all the things, run a business, still maintain a network, have actual friends, which I rarely and honestly don't honestly have. And stay healthy. That is nearly impossible. It is so much. It's so much. One of the things I'm doing from a phone perspective is, it's interesting to brought that up. So I am doing, I'm trying to do no phones once the kids go down. So basically, like, wife and I. So basically from essentially the hours of like eight, eight until nine, like we talked about like fine.

You know, we did talk about phones in bed, we're fine. We do it. We do that. But when terms of like actual time to hang out, like, you know, no screens basically for, you know, me and my wife from like eight until we're in bed, right? So that's kind of something we do. I think that's really helped me a lot. I mean, one of the things that I struggle with is like, you know, I'm always jotting down things for work and stuff. And what I notice is the more I can pull out of work, the more creative and the more ideas you have, which is funny how that works.

Right. So, you know, I've said this for a long time to keep myself accountable. But to me, it's like, if you are too busy to at least get a workout. When I say a workout, I mean, just go and like move for 30 minutes. Yeah, totally. CrossFit's an hour with drive time. It's a little bit more. but like jump on a bike go for a while. Jump on a bike, go for a walk. I mean, I think the big thing is, is if you find yourself not working out, you're too busy. You're too busy. And I'm not prioritizing. Yeah, and I would do that, right?

I'm trying, again, I guess I'm trying to take back my day, which is, and maybe that can be the other title of this. This is like the title B of this, is like take taking back your day, where it's like you have to put it back your life. Yeah. Like I'm back in control. You're not letting just these like sort of bad habits start to like reaccumulate. You're not letting things get out of control, but it's easy, right? When like things get busy to be like, Oh yeah, like for me, I'm like, okay, I'm going to automate all of my guests coming out of my, the live stream, right?

Well, okay, there's not an API for some of these tools and some things can't be automated. So then I sort of just like let it go. But then meanwhile I'm still spending hours manually processing these things that I don't need to be doing. So, and it's, it's just, It's like re grabbing on to like your life and like building the life that you want, right? Like not so whole that was the whole point of starting my business was building the life that I wanted working for the companies I wanted and then I sort of just like kind of let that go and it was like now with the whole root of my job is hanging with developers Why have I been in isolation?

Makes no sense Well, and I think and I like what Nick said here. I love training but getting it done earlier. So I'm not I can't I just can't I tried it it broke out in the weirdest way possible. That's crazy. See, I have to do it in the morning. I'm too tired in the afternoons. Yeah, for me, I don't know, for me, it just works. So again, this is why I like having difference in opinion here, especially because you got to try what works yourself, but you've got to know it works. Exactly, exactly. That is honestly, that is the key because like, so a few years ago, I decided I was gonna go to wait last journey.

Like I used to wait like over 200 pounds. I was like pretty heavy, unhealthy. And it was really about just like losing weight to to be healthy, there's nothing wrong with being overweight or weighing that mind you. It was a personal choice that was unhealthy. And as I did that, I started realizing what my body likes and doesn't like. Again, this last year, I've been eating all the trash things. I can't have corn, I can't have peanuts, I can't have gluten. And I've been eating it all like crazy cause peanut butter, but I feel like crap. So it's like re-grabbing on to like what you want in life, you know, and just like setting those boundaries, which oh my goodness, very hard, resounding.

Yeah, and I'm just saying I hired nutritionists for a while. At the point now, where I know what to do, so she's helping my wife now. But I have a bio journal and I plug in everything. One thing I've, I, the result, this feels like a crossover episode. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it kind of is there the same time. So for me, it's like, like I've gotten pretty much rid of it. And I'll tell you, woo. Like so my wife's been on my case. And you know how husbands are, right? Wipes on your face, stop eating gluten is bad for you. Stop eating them all the way up all the stuff.

Yep, the wine house is the thing that is single-handedly transforming. I can't, and this is, and it's a challenge to me on the road. I can't eat heavy at night. I just, I can't anymore. I literally can't, I've learned that. I don't drink anymore because of my whoop. I may have a glass of rose, which is what I, that's kind of like my weakness. I'm buying a glass. Probably be able to get the glass done. I don't even drink really. If I do, it's just because it's a one off like, oh, I haven't, I just want a margarita, because I like them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love a good margarita for time. So for me, but it's like, it's being aware and again, trying to take your day back, trying to take your health back, which is incredibly important. The jailing comes in and it feels really hard to balance everything daily. I find myself in different eras. I think C- I agree with that. I think C- I agree with that. It is huge, right? Like I'm in a season right now I'm trying to take back my day because one thing that I consistently believe in is that we overworked ourselves during COVID. Heck yes, we did. We did. And we have not been able to recalibrate since.

Honestly, I don't think it's COVID. I think it's just generally and like you can speak to this probably because like earlier being Vaco right versus sort of like tech. But honestly, I feel like you know like gosh, let me start thinking of timeline in my head when I was thinking about this. It was like 2016, 2017, 2018, like that kind of range. All of a sudden like technology and this sort of sector became like this hustle culture. And it was like, go, go, go, go, go, go. Like we can't work fast enough, we can't make enough money. I think SaaS, maybe this is SaaS, right?

Where it was just like everyone started working harder and it was this constant competition. And I think that COVID was like, bloop, it's time to reset. You can't do that anymore. You don't get to go out of the house and hustle. You're stuck inside, you're hanging with your family. your kids are slowing you down. Like I think that it's actually this like bigger, wider hustle culture that like COVID was like, okay, let's change. And we did become efficient, but I think we found our like, oh wait, we're resetting, we are hustling. We're gonna hustle even more cause we're stuck at home. And I think life just like became super weird in how that hustle came about.

I don't know, that's at least my hypothesis. No, I mean, I firmly agree that, you know, and I even find myself, I mean, I am still again, I am like, I feel like my hands have been gripping to the steering wheel. And I feel like I'm doing exactly my fingers one by one right now. And I mean, even prime example, like, you know, this past Friday, I had some personal appointments. I think I had like a dentist and then like, you know, but it was like a dentist. And then I was like, well, I had my dad's in tech lunch schedule. So they're not going to down to the office.

And it's like, I canceled the dad's in tech lunch because I was supposed to go too much out of the office. But I'm kind of like, like I probably should have kept it and it's okay that I was out of the office a lot. I don't know. It's just kind of this, it's just a war right now that balance. I think and that's what I'm saying is like, I think that they're okay. So here's to actually, as I started thinking about it when you're applying is like, I think it's about the money and like the blowing of the money, right? Like when I first got into big tech, I was like, why do we have catered lunches?

Why is there Red Bull on tap? Why can I get these fancy bougie waters whenever I want? And now we're like seeing this like reset of like, whoa, okay, hey, hold up, hold up, hold up. Turns out we can't just blow money for five, six, seven, eight, 10 years, and then still become profitable companies, right? There was so much like money being grown. So I think that's maybe a big part of like where my sort of hypothesis and thinking is coming in is that it's like, Okay, we went so fast and we spent so much money. It's like, how do we actually move fast now?

But how do we not move fast? We move smart. Like we move super smart, you know? And so I think that's like the whole finger gripping. And like we all are realizing that it's like, we have to reset, we have to rebalance, we have to re-prioritize in order for us to like work smart versus like, you know, have all this money and all these opportunities and we're just hustling hard, you know? That's different. And I think going back to like, for me, I would highly recommend using a tool. Test it and choose me a savvy cow. I know there's a lot out there. Cow.com. Honestly, I love savvy cow because you can see like, like when you book something, you can see how it relates to your calendar, which is a complete game changer.

Cause like if I book on the calendar or cow.com, I got to like pull up my calendar. I'm always like kind of seeing what works, but like, I am OCD when it comes to editing that. I've edited it, edited it, did it. Like six times this year already. Oh, yeah. To work with my second. Yes, yes. And again, I think do what you got to do, but I also think you can only book meetings with me at a certain time, right? Because like... Totally, same way. Yeah, I just think it's huge. I think it's huge. If you rely on a scheduling tool, I let it rip too much.

I kept it open too much. And I've been having 14 meetings a day. There's just holy, I can't get nothing done in that world. Like that's right. Right. And so that's kind of the thing where you're like a leader though, you know, like sometimes that's what leaders do is like you sit in meetings because you're bringing people together, you're building relationships, you're getting approval, you're making sure there's buy in and that that means meetings. Yeah. Yeah. So again, trying to balance it has been very interesting. I do want to talk about getting, you know, I know last week was heavy community, Kency Dods, Pauline, Taz, all community based streams last week, hell of a hell of a stream last week.

But like, you know, you talked about, you know, getting, you know, being in person, you've even talked, you know, backstage about potentially trying to build something in Waco. Yeah. I mean, talk about which by the way I visited Waco once, it's a really beautiful point little city. Um, uh, talk about again, I know we're beaten a broken record, but I still feel like people just aren't getting why you need to be in person. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I will totally talk about that. So, um, you know, I think that yes in person, I'm going to caveat this with anyone who feels like in person is so scary.

There are, there's a virtual version, but it's, and it's not the same. It's not a hundred the same, right? You're going to get a 90 if you work really hard. But if you're an introvert and you don't want to go in person, you're not going to get a 90 out of a virtual, because I can tell you right now, you're not going to put yourself out there in the same way if you're not willing to go to in person. So what this all boils down to is putting yourself out there. And that's actually what this whole sort of precedent is what my keynote is going to be at PHP Tech.

So anyone who is into PHP, they're spelled whatever. You've got to check out PHP Tech this year. I will be keynoting there. But coming around to that, right, is like you've got to hang out with your peers. like developers, one of the tweets that I posted at Commit Your Code, and it was casual. I say this sort of soapbox frequently, but I'm like, developers aren't anti-social. We only want to hang out with our peers, or people who get us, right? Like, Kayla, you say you're not a developer, but you're like a by extension developer because you understand us, you spent time with us, you get to know us, and that's what we care about, right?

We just don't want someone coming in and saying, here's my pitch, here's my crap, buy my stuff, join my thing, right? We want there to be this authentic relationship. And so oftentimes people think that developers are antisocial. We are not antisocial. We want to spend time with ourselves. And I think that was my reflection from last year is like, we can so easily just isolate, keep doing our thing. It's fine. There's nothing wrong fundamentally, right? I thought it was fine till I came out of the dark hole and was like, oh, wait a minute, I need my peers. So when you hang out with these folks in person, whether you're a developer or a non-developer, right?

There's this, hey, how are you? Like, you know, who do you spend your time with? you're starting to get to know them. What do you do? You're like, oh, you have a dog. I have a dog too. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, human, human that I like. I like, even just this call, right? You and I came on here and we're like Monday morning. Like I could tell we were both sort of like in it. I'm pretty caged this morning, right? But it's like, no, wait, it's Taylor. It's like my friend, right? This is great. It's a conversation of things we want to talk about.

And that's where that is deeply rooted is like finding your tribe, whether it's developers or whatever, because when you can get into that space and just like unveil and be like, hey, I've been living in darkness for a year. How are you? You know, it's like, it's a safe space. Like a space where like, you feel, you feel empowered, right? And you like feel that like, yeah, you get it, you get it. But when it comes to developer events, absolutely, whether it's virtual or in person, there has to be sort of this like face to face, let me take the gloves off. Let me tell you about myself.

So So it's like the round table conversations. It's like the one on one kind of chats is things conversations like this where we're like, hey friends out there, maybe you're not in the conversation, but you're in the chat and we're just unveiling everything. It builds the sense of community. And like, I am not going to say that necessarily like, I'm gonna talk about my faith and it doesn't relate to you, to folks if they do not believe and that's A-OK. My daughter has this book that's like God had this beautiful plan and it was to create the earth and to populate it with people so that they could love each other and live in community.

And so whether you believe that religiously or whether you believe that, because we are humans and we do need humans, we have to bring that community. And that means like bringing people together. So like, yes, I wanna bring tech people together, locally and we go, heck, you know what I wanna do? I wanna bring farm people together so I can teach them technology. Like there's just so much that we should and could be doing in our local community to make us feel less dark and isolated. And we just continue to keep sitting at our desks, hiding in our offices, hiding behind our computer screens and sitting on our phones instead of engaging.

Yeah, that'll breach. You know, I think- That was a lot. No, I love it. No, I love it. I think, you know, so I was in, so I flew to Tampa last week. It was kind of a super last minute guy strip. It was the two guys. It was the two guys with unicorn binders that you should do the lifestyle with at Vaco. And- Very cool. Basically, we worked out of the Tampa office for Vaco. And it was really cool being in the office, just around those guys and just how much, like it's really hard to explain. It is interesting, it's what RJ said. RJ goes, we need to do.

But I don't think we need all day on site. Yeah. Listen, this is a whole another lot. I've done live streams with this. I think if you're just gonna go in the office and be on Zoom, there's no point. I like believe or not, I liked it how we did it a little bit at gun. We're like a division flu in. So like marketing flu in for two days for one quarter sales flu in for two or three days in the next quarter. I like that. So that way you're not on zoom calls with your people. Yep. This is this is a whole other thing.

I don't think we're a return office is very slippery slope. I don't think it's a good idea. I think the horrible idea. I absolutely hate it. Like RTO. I will fight that fight. I am with you RJ. I am so against it because you should let people work how they naturally work. If someone wants to work in the office, let them come to the office. If someone wants to work from home, then let them work at home. But create this space just like you're saying, Taylor. Yeah, absolutely. But I think too, I had a guy message me and this is how simple it starts. How do you got a message me?

There's a huge Nash Dev Slack channel. It's like, that's cool. 20,000 people want it and it's basically anybody in Nashville. I did not start it. It's been around for years. And basically one guy, one guy mess with me goes, Hey, trying to do what you're doing. I want to start like a just a low key hang. And he goes, I like hamburgers. So I want to do like a Nashville Dev hamburger meetup. He goes, do you have any advice? I said, just start. I said, you'll probably have one other person show up for a long time. But I said, just stay at it. And I think it's fun stuff like that.

And I think that's what more people need. I think social clubs, and this is kind of goes into more like enterprise marketing and community the way I'm viewing things. Like I think, and again, I pull a lot of stuff out of the fashion industry, but there, but like these clubs, like I think there's gonna be more, like prime example, I think pie in the sky, I think we could have a torque club. Like it would basically be like, hey, we have a torque office location in Brazil. You go there, it's like a we work, but it's much vibe here. You know, it's kind of exciting.

We work in Soho House, right? And I think there is, there is a need, and I think businesses could do this if they have the money to invest, but basically create these hubs where then other people in the community, I'll never forget Gary Vaynerchuk said this years ago, and it's always stuck out on my mind. I pitched this to Vaco. I was like, why don't we just open up our offices for people to come in and work? Yep. Now I was told because of security stuff, which I get. That I get, yeah. I can just have anybody off the street coming in. But I think that was a great idea by Gary Vee, was just like, hey, let's just have whatever communities want to come in and use our office, they can literally just come in and hang out.

And I think that's a brilliant idea. So just thought. So I had some content and other stuff that I had put out there. There's a blog post on the Built for Devs Hub. So it's hub.built4.dev. And it's basically like, how to do your developer marketing without a budget. It's a really great post. So no budget developer marketing. And there's a little connotation or commentary on there where I'm talking about how developer curated channels like so incredibly hot right now. And so when I say developer curated right, we can talk about non-technical and even just be talking about if you're a horse person, another horse person brings the club together right?

It's like it's you and your peers and they're bringing that together. And that used to be what I saw in technology, you know, back in like when it when SaaS became like just fire right that 2016 sort of, I mean it's before then but that for whatever year that that year is just or whatever reason that year is shining bright in my history but long story short right? We had developer meetups and they were authentic. Developers are bringing them together. We were talking about challenges that we were solving, code that we were building. We want to build. Other people want to do what they enjoy doing.

When you bring together those little niche communities, that's the fire. That's how you find people. That's how you build networks. That's how you find your future users. That's how you expand anything. You have to bring the people that care about it. I think more than anything, that's how I look at my work. When prospective companies come into me and they're like, we need to build a developer program. I'm like, we need to figure out exactly who your developers are and the channels that they spend time and how we can, by extension, be authentic in those channels and create net new channels that are going to let you shine bright while still letting those developers do what they want to do.

And it's like, that's what you're doing at Torc. That's what I'm doing at Built for Devs in our hub. We are bringing developers together around topics, around conversations, around meaningful things they actually give a crap about because it wants them to come and hang just like they come and hang in these streams. 100% you know, it's the interest in coming by Pat and I saw somebody else tweet about it the other day about why Business don't have on premise childcare like like I I posted this when I was at vaco still if vaco had a on-site daycare. I would go to the office Dude general Mills did it was incredible and I had just had my daughter.

It was amazing. I would like yeah You want to get you want to get your employees into the office? Hell yeah I don't care. And off the healthy lunches. Yep. I'm not saying, or even just a lunch stipend, because again, I know planning it can be a lot if you don't have the ability to. But like, yeah, like listen. Just figure out what your people need, right? Like what's the culture in your team, right? Is daycare a problem? Then like go down the street and find the daycare and be like, can I buy up all your spots? So it's for our employees. If churches can have big churches can have childcare, why can't businesses have childcare?

Exactly, exactly. And I think Pat, you're right on, right? It's like bringing, having an RTO or sort of forcing an office or any of that sentiment, it has to be based around those employees because more than anything, like companies, they're trying to regain power. That's why they're laying people off. They're trying to regain what they need. They want those tax cuts. They want whatever businesses need to survive. And it's like, that's not what's in our best interest, right? And so we need to decide like, what kind of companies are we gonna work for? Are we gonna take a stand right now so we see the companies we want in the future?

Are we gonna bend and we're gonna go to RTO and put our kids in daycare. Dude, it snowed. This is a really quick tale of the art. Just put this light in someone's head about how powerful this is. We moved to Texas. We had it a child now. So we're from Minnesota. We're used to snow. All of our kids have played in the snow, except for our toddler. We got a very light dusting of snow the other day. I got to sit and play with my toddler for 15 minutes while the snow was melting. But still, the very first time he got to play with snow.

If I had to drive to Austin or Dallas or an office, I would have missed the first time my kid played the snow. And no company in the world is worth that to me. So that's my view. It's like if you want to have employees around, do it around the employee. If someone doesn't have kids, let them frickin' be your office culture, right? If someone wants to go home early cause they want to pick their kid up from daycare every day, great, they're still gonna be on the computer, they're still gonna do their job. It's just around the life that they want, which will make them happier.

100%. Yeah. And again, I, yeah, all this for sure, for sure. Is we're wrapping up here, Tessa, because I blocked out to go make breakfast after this. Oh, you gotta eat. I'm better at eating. That's why that's my good thing. We are running off pure caffeine right now. What any last things you want to play anything going on built built for dev? Any last words of wisdom encouragement for the dev? Just kind of your last little bit of my little last little bit of magic. Yeah, honestly. So built Developer Devs is my business. I do developer relations. I help product companies, developer products, essentially build products successfully for developers, right?

So Taylor popped in a link. I'm actually going to be over in that hub right afterwards. Thank you for reminding me. I almost forgot. Running an office hour. So if you go to that link, that will take you right over there. So you can come ask me questions, hang out. You can check out the hub. I have a developer network I've been building for over 15 years. And in my work building developer products and programs, I'm realizing that when I can bring different developers in, they can help the companies hugely, like your experience sucks, that SDK is horrible, your docs are worthless, and it's really liberating for both devs and for my clients.

And so it's just this really beautiful place where like darn it, we all need to be spent in time together. So that's what we're doing. So yeah, that's the shout out there and come and find me in office hours. We can chat, ask me questions, whatever you're looking for, I'll be there for about an hour or so. I love it. All right, rabbit fire here. We're getting close to the balance times. What's your go to candy? Like, I know people like, I don't like candy. If you should pick candy, like your go to candy, the tas, but I don't like candy. I was like, dude, just go with me here.

Okay, I'll go with you here too. So mine, I can only get it Easter time usually, although they're starting to expand. I like those little mini Cadbury eggs that are like, I'll go to the chocolat in the middle. Freaking love those things. They brought them out at Christmas. I was like, oh yeah. So maybe Valentine's Day, Cadbury, bring out my little mini eggs. That's my candy. I don't like candy or flowers and honestly I hate Valentine's Day. If my husband was like, Hey, I got you a new milk cow. I'd be like, Oh, how you doing? Sorry. That's my thing. So who I want to give a chance for you to give a shout out to somebody else.

Who is doing really cool stuff in the deaf community that you admire right now? Oh my gosh, so many. But I think Aaron Francis honestly, and I know that like you like absolutely adore him. I had the chance to- Yeah, and you watch my blog. Oh, yes, dude. You want creepy too. All the man. Christ, he's the guy on the bar. Go. Whoa, please stop coming up to me. No, I don't think he's easily. He's on the show this week. Oh my God. I love that. Well, folks, you got to check that out. Honestly, so many folks, but I want to say that Aaron, because he is building a business and we got to bond about how freaking hard it is to build a business.

And so I'm going to shout out to Anne Francis because he is building a business. And so they've got try hard studios. They are building education programs for developers, a lot of video curation, but really trying to build out those educational programs. And I think it's a really cool niche offering. So shout out to him for many reasons. Yeah, I'm going to leave it at that. Cause otherwise I can keep it. Any interesting kind of tools, trends, frameworks, things that you're thinking of right now? Yeah. So I actually launched my newsletter today. So go to built for dot dev and then click over to newsletter.

And you'll see a couple of things in there that's going on. That's pretty cool. But one thing that trends AI, right? Everyone's building with AI. Everyone's coding with AI. everyone's trying AI, but here's the thing that's really cool. Tages and I again, so shout out back to that 99 Devs livestream from Friday. We talked about it and I, there's this thing that I do in my day-to-day work. I'm constantly doing developer experience audits where I'm looking at their website, looking at their docs, looking at their brand presence, looking at their product, all the things. He's like, yeah, you could get an AI agent to do that and I was like, yes.

So we talked about automating an AI agent to create and provide a developer experience. This is obviously an external, not an product. to be a mentor. Benchmark or score. So if anyone thinks that that's just super nifty and really cool, we're going to start building that over in the hub. So yeah, I think that. And just checking out some of these AI tools. Agent QL is a past client of mine. So I just have to shout them out. It's like a web scraping tool, but it's more than that. And it allows you to spout out a lot of really cool data. So if you do want to, like use case, I created a recipes app and I wanted it to go scrape a recipe off of a website.

It just went boom, scraped the recipe, popped it in JSON, copy pasted that into my recipes app and like boom. And a matter of no time I had multiple recipes over in my app. So Agent QL is a cool developer product. I love that. What's one big goal you have for yourself for 2025 for the business? Ooh, to hire a head of DevRel and to hire a head of community. The head of community would lead and run my community and my events. Head of DevRel would work with my clients. So in order to bring on two people full time, That means my business needs to be flourishing more and I need to expand more into the enterprise and establish startup space.

So which is what I have done with my services for the year. So I have changed that. So yeah, that's my big business goal. I love it. What is one thing around the farm that you've enjoyed doing lately? Oh my gosh, honestly like planning. We are planning out exactly what we wanna do. My husband has started a cattle AI business artificial insemination, in pregnant in cows. There you go. We're realizing that farmers don't have technology. And so we, I want to kind of get back into spending some investment in time on that and getting a couple of fresh milk cows and building out technology for farmers, honestly.

Like if I could get away from big tech and say like five years and be in farming tech, oh. I think you could. I think absolutely. That would be a sweet spot. For sure, for sure. I just got to get the like revenue rhythm going with my business so that I can step aside a little bit, let it run itself. longer times for sure. Yeah, absolutely. But I think I would, honestly, I'd probably completely shift right and just start a software company that's for, you know, agriculture or something. So, yeah. All right, last question. Big dreams. Up today. And again, thank you all for tuning in the comment section.

It's been great. Real quick tomorrow, we have Brooke Sweetar on the show. She is a bootcamp grad that realized she needed to get out there more and she has amassed 16,000 followers on LinkedIn because of her podcast and putting out content. So we're going to talk about that tomorrow. And then of course, the great Aaron Francis on Thursday. Last question, Tess, as always, the show's called Guidance Councilor 2.0 because we had Guidance Councilors in middle school, high school and college. But now as adults, we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to. If you could go back in time and tell Tess to anything, what would be your biggest piece of career advice to you, Tesso?

Oh, that's deep. Oh, gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh. Okay, this is actually going to be faith related. I've been pretty faith heavy today, sorry, but it's the Holy Spirit is in me. Is that I struggled a lot in life and I think I've constantly struggled with some sort of dark phases and it's not dark. It's isolating, right? the way that I think I'm a heavy thinker, and I like code, right? And so I think I would have urged myself to realize that like we're here for a second. Like literally a microsecond in comparison to what Earth is in comparison to what everything around us is. Just stop sweating the big, like the little stuff, right?

And like put all of my energy into my faith and being able to not worry and not get all caught up in what are the Jones is doing, what is someone else doing, and just really hyper-focus. I'm like, what is your dream? What do you wanna do? Don't let anyone get in your way. I love it. That's wonderful. All right, y'all. Yeah. Great chat today. So I'm sorry I can say bye to you backstage. Y'all have a great one. We'll see y'all tomorrow morning, 9.30 a.m. central. Peace. Peace. Hey, you did it. get listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why?

There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me at Tdaston on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.